The board went red at 9:40. Chicago was doing the thing it does in November, and my flight to Boston became a rumour, then a text, then a voucher for a hotel I didn't want and a night that had been emptied of plans. I stood under the board with my bag and felt the particular freedom of a calendar dying.

I am Hannah. I am thirty-two. The man next to me had the same red line on his phone and a laugh he didn't quite let out. Omar, he said, when the silence got stupid. Thirty-four. He had been going to Boston for a wedding that would now happen without him in the photographs. I had been going for a meeting that would be…